Art in Action

Staff/Facilitation Team

Xiomara Castro

Xiomara Castro is a Co-Founder & Operations Director; at camp she coordinates workshops in political education, visual arts, media arts, and anti-oppression workshops. During camp, some of her workshops are, the “Linking the Issues” and Street Art/Giant Puppet making workshops. In “Linking the Issues”, Xiomara touches on the methods connecting global justice issues to domestic civil and human rights issues in the U.S. Also, she co-facilitates, the Dig This Story program with Maryam, which allows her to engage her passions for video and photography.

She is currently Director of the Silence the Violence initiative at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

She is a Salvadoran-American who has been involved in the social change movement from a very young age, initially fighting to end the U.S. military intervention in El Salvador. Later, she worked for immigrant and farm worker’s rights in the U.S. Xiomara has worked as a farm worker union organizer in the Northwest, aiding refugees in gaining healthcare and legal services in the Southwest, and engaged youth around the country as a grassroots educator in California and along the US/Mexico Border.

Alli Chagi-Starr

Alli Chagi-Starr is the Green Business Partners and Events Manager with Green For All, and was the producer of the Dream Reborn Conference. Formerly at the Ella Baker Center, Alli helped implement the Solutions Salon series and the Social Equity track at the United Nations World Environment Day.

Alli is a co-founder of Art in Action. She founded Dancers Without Borders, Another World is Possible Road Shows, and Art and Revolution, a national movement of artist-activists committed to revitalizing social movements through art and creative expression.

Her essays about innovative activism appear in Democratizing the Global Economy, Global Uprising, Voices from the WTO, The Political Edge and How to Stop the Next War Now. She facilitates seminars on developing creative tools for global/personal transformation and movement building. 

She has a B.A. in Cultural Organizing and Performance from The Art and Social Change Department of New College of California, 1991.

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SeaSunz/AshEl Eldridge

SeaSunz/AshEl Eldridge, a native of Chicago, is currently an Oakland, California based artist and spiritual activist. He performs spoken word, rap and sings nationally with conscious Hip Hop, Dub, Reggae and Electronica bands including Wisdom (www.wisdomcreations.com) and Bassnectar (www.bassnectar.net). He has appeared at Earthdance, the High Sierra Music Festival, Tweeter Center in Philadelphia, House of Blues Hollywood, the historic Fillmore Theater in San Francisco, and the Tabernacle in Atlanta, sharing stages with, Steel Pulse, KRS-One, STS9, Michael Franti, Midnite, Ozomatli and more.

He is currently a music and meditation facilitator with Art in Action, where he works to empower low income youth from urban communities. His work aims to cultivate the links between both local and global movements for social justice, spiritual awakening and ecological healing. Most recently, he did outreach and coordination for the Dream Reborn Conference (www.dreamreborn.org) in Memphis, TN April 4, 2008. AshEl worked on mobilizing a green youth alliance to uplift communities in Oakland, and is working on the Green Jobs Now National Day of Action with Green For All.

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Simmy Makhijani

Simmy Makhijani is Development Director of Art in Action. She also serves on the board for the American Musical Heritage Foundation. She has completed her Ph.D. coursework in the Social and Cultural Anthropology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. Her previous degrees include an M.A. in Asian Studies in Religion and Philosophy and a B.A. in Journalism.

Her areas of specialization and research interests include: South Asia and diaspora; religious studies; postcolonial and feminist theory; gender and violence; immigration history and law; human rights, cultural survival, minority issues and economic justice; globalization, development and state accountability.

Simmy has been a contributing feature writer for several newspapers and magazines. She has an extensive professional background in development, marketing, and publicity having worked in the music, performing arts, and publishing industries. In 2002, she left the San Francisco Opera as Associate Director, Annual Fund to return to graduate school. Having just finished doctoral coursework in a rigorous social justice program, she has returned to development as a way to support Art in Action’s local struggles for social and political change.

Simmy has written and performed poetry, been a vocal contributor for music projects, and has been a creative adviser and narrative and editorial consultant for both independent feature films and documentaries.

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Galen Peterson

Galen is a community educator and music producer in Oakland, CA. He is a Co-Founder and Director of the Turf Unity Music Program. At camp he instructs workshops in political education, spoken word, music production, video production, graphic arts design and anti-oppression workshops. Galen runs a music studio in downtown Oakland that offers free studio time to street youth and homeless young adults.

Galen created and manages Cov Records, the youth-run music label affiliated with the community studio. Cov Records, has produced many solo albums, compilation CD’s, music videos, documentary films and hundreds of songs. Galen produces beats for many artists in the Bay Area, as well as doing post-production and manufacturing for albums. He also does photography for artists and graphic art design of CD covers, posters, and fliers. Galen has attended the Music Recording Industry program at San Francisco State University, and holds a degree in mutli-cultural counseling, art therapy and social work from Evergreen State College.

Galen produces music and art events in the Bay Area in collaboration with the Silence the Violence movement, which uses art to spread awareness about community violence. He also works with the Grind for the Green project (www.myspace.com/grindforthegreen) and Weapons of Mass Expression Weekend Wake-Up events (weekendwakeup.com). Galen also does work with the Men’s Story Project (www.mensstoryproject.org) to confront sexism and patriarchy in society, and explore ways to redefine masculinity in our communities. And, Galen works with the Y-Step collective which does racial justice work with white youth in the Bay Area (www.ystep.org).

Galen has been producing music in Oakland for many years and has worked on many music projects in the Bay Area, including producing the politically conscious Queer Arab hip-hop rap duo NaR. He also produced three solo albums of his lyrical poetry with his down-tempo hip-hop beats, and has done collaborations with the LA producer Logic the Prophet to produce music videos. Galen uses his music to reflect his political and spiritual beliefs, and explore the roots of violence and oppression in society, while offering a vision of peace and unity.

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Alicia Raquel

Alicia Raquel is an Oakland native, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She teaches dance, theater, spoken word and peace keeping in Oakland schools, and has collaborated with spoken word, theater, dance and hip hop artists in throughout the Bay Area. She has performed in venues from Oakland, California to San Juan, Puerto Rico and continues to wake her game up daily.

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Maryam Roberts

Maryam RobertsMaryam is a Co-Founder of Art in Action, and the Director of the Dig This Story program.  Maryam also works at the Women of Color Resource Center, as the Peace & Solidarity Program director.  She is a photographer and writer, and enjoys assisting youth to share their stories.

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Supporting Members/Facilitators

Celana Ahtye

Celana Ahtye is a sixth generation Chinese American, who is an Advisor and Camp Facilitator who conducts dance and community building exercises for camp. She is currently a Program Coordinator at EPIC (Environmental Prevention in Communities), which creates strategies around alcohol problems for positive community change.

Utilizing her knowledge of karate, gained from training with her father, she has facilitated women’s self defense during the Morning Movement for the Masses sessions annually.

She is active on the Advisory Board of Health through Art and a member of the women of color collective Dancers Without Borders. Celana holds a Bachelor of Science degree from San Francisco State University in Health Sciences, emphasizing in Community Public Health. She has worked for the Latino Issues Forum, around the globalization of Big Tobacco and California State Universities on the divestment into Big Tobacco for their investment portfolios.

Also, she protested in Cancun against the WTO and in Miami against FTAA in 2003, on global education on tobacco control. She continues to advocate for youth and adult partnerships in the Community Public Health sector.

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Susan Appe

Susan Appe is a Camp Facilitator and during camp she co-ordinates workshops in visual arts and political education. Susan is a musician, teacher, activist, and visual artist in San Francisco. She is a music teacher for kindergarten through twelfth graders in San Francisco and Oakland. She is a founding member of the women’s a cappella trio Samsara, and of the annual Women’s Voices Rise Up benefit concert. Susan’s work in arts-activism is featured in the films, “Just Say It: A Revolution In The Making”, “Rise Up”, and “Street Level TV”. Also, she serves on the Board of Directors of CounterPulse Communtiy Art Space.

Deeply committed to art for social justice, she strives to use vocal music and large-scale street theater to inspire, educate about our rich history of resistance, and empower people for our current and future struggles; continuing our long history of the oral tradition of storytelling, celebrating, sharing sorrow and creating community through song and public art.

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Aimee Suzara

Aimee is a Filipino-American writer/performer, a cultural worker, and arts educator. She is a Camp Facilitator and during camp conducts workshops in poetry, spoken word, and performance art. Aimee teaches at Las Positas Community College and is a Mills College M.F.A. candidate.

Aimee is a member of Kreatibo, a queer Pin@y arts collective who produced the award winning plays, Dalagas and Tomboys: A Family Affair. She is a longtime social and environmental justice activist who co-founded the Filipino/American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES) in 2000. Aimee’s passion for social change led her to positions with the San Francisco Women Against Rape (SFWAR) and the Youth Media Council.

She is a former member of the multi-ethnic group Dancers Without Borders. Through her current work, Pagbabalik (Return), Aimee has taken bold steps forward as an artist, and recently, she received a Zellerbach Community Arts Grant and was selected for CounterPULSE’s 2006 Emerging Performance Festival.

Aimee’s other achievements include: publication in the anthology “Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees,” a track on the “Eye of the Storm” CD benefiting survivors of Hurricane Katrina, and performances at Apature, Radical Performance Festival, and the UN World Environment Day Voices Rise Up!

As an educator, Aimee has facilitated workshops with Aim High Academy, The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, and Youth Speaks.

Aimee has spoken to conferences, universities, high schools, and panels, where she often speaks about the intersection of art and social justice activism.

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Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is a Camp Facilitator and our Head Chef, during camp he implements a workshop in food justice. Bryant’s passion for grub can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, TN, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, cook, and appreciate food. For the past five years, he has committed himself to feeding people and illuminating the connections between poverty, malnutrition, and institutional racism.

In 2001, Bryant founded b-healthy! (Building Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth), a New York City based, non-profit organization made up of adult and youth social justice activists, chefs, and mothers working to strengthen the food justice movement in the US and beyond.

Bryant has received numerous awards for his work, which include an Open Society Institute Communtiy Fellowship Soros Foundation), a Wave of the Future Award (Glynwood Center), and a Sea Change Residency (Gaea Foundation).

His first book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen Tarcher/Penguin), co-written with Anna Lappé (foreword by Eric Schlosser) offers readers ideas, hands-on tools and menus to create healthy lives for themselves and their communities. Since the publication of Grub Bryant has traveled the country speaking and doing cooking demonstrations at bookstores, farmers markets, co-ops, churches, clubs, cafes and over a dozen universities. Because his family surrounded him with literature, music, and visual art, in addition to cooking, Bryant expresses himself through creative writing, DJing, photography, and collage. His words and images have appeared in numerous publications.

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